Bøker av Christopher de Bellaigue

"Christopher de Bellaigue has a magic talent for writing history. It is as if we are there as the era of Suleyman the Magnificent unfolds." -Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Narrated through the eyes of the intimates of Suleyman the Magnificent, the sixteenth-century sultan of the Ottoman Empire, The Lion House animates with stunning immediacy the fears and stratagems of those brought into orbit around him: the Greek slave who becomes his Grand Vizier, the Venetian jewel dealer who acts as his go-between, the Russian consort who becomes his most beloved wife.Within a decade and a half, Suleyman held dominion over twenty-five million souls, from Baghdad to the walls of Vienna, and with the help of his brilliant pirate commander, Barbarossa, placed more Christians than ever before or since under Muslim rule. And yet the real drama takes place in close-up: in small rooms and whispered conversations, behind the curtain of power, where the sultan sleeps head-to-toe with his best friend and eats from wooden spoons with his baby boy.In The Lion House, Christopher de Bellaigue tells the story not just of rival superpowers in an existential duel, nor of one of the most consequential lives in human history, but of what it means to live in a time when a few men get to decide the fate of the world.

"A new generation of travelers are eager to see innovation that will alleviate their guilt about flying, and they want to know where the industry is, how seriously they're taking climate change, and what the future looks like. This is the story of the search for a way to fly green"--

"Christopher de Bellaigue has a magic talent for writing history. It is as if we are there as the era of Suleyman the Magnificent unfolds." -Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Narrated through the eyes of the intimates of Suleyman the Magnificent, the sixteenth-century sultan of the Ottoman Empire, The Lion House animates with stunning immediacy the fears and stratagems of those brought into orbit around him: the Greek slave who becomes his Grand Vizier, the Venetian jewel dealer who acts as his go-between, the Russian consort who becomes his most beloved wife.Within a decade and a half, Suleyman held dominion over twenty-five million souls, from Baghdad to the walls of Vienna, and with the help of his brilliant pirate commander, Barbarossa, placed more Christians than ever before or since under Muslim rule. And yet the real drama takes place in close-up: in small rooms and whispered conversations, behind the curtain of power, where the sultan sleeps head-to-toe with his best friend and eats from wooden spoons with his baby boy.In The Lion House, Christopher de Bellaigue tells the story not just of rival superpowers in an existential duel, nor of one of the most consequential lives in human history, but of what it means to live in a time when a few men get to decide the fate of the world.

On August 19, 1953, the American and British intelligence agencies launched a desperate coup in Iran against Muhammad Mossadegh, a bedridden seventy-two-year-old man. His crimes had been to flirt with communism and to nationalize his country's oil industry, which for forty years had been in British hands. But the countries that overthrew Mossadegh would, in time, deeply regret siding with his great foe, Shah Muhammad-Reza Pahlavi. Mossadegh was one of the first liberals of the Middle East, a man who wanted friendship with the West?but not slavish dependence.Who was this political guerrilla of noble blood, so adored in the Middle East and so reviled in the West? Schooled in Europe and pitted against dictatorship at home, Mossadegh had become the nation's conscience by the time of the Shah's ascension. Written by our foremost observer of Iran, Patriot of Persia reveals a man who embodied his nation's struggle for freedom and whose life serves as a warning to the White House and Downing Street as they commit to further intervention in a volatile and unpredictable region.

The Islamic Enlightenment: a contradiction in terms? The Muslim world has often been accused of a failure to modernise, reform and adapt. Beginning with the collision of East and West following Napoleon's arrival in Egypt, and taking us through 200 years of Middle Eastern history, this book tells the forgotten story of the Islamic Enlightenment.

What is the meaning of love and death in a remote, forgotten, impossibly conflicted part of the world? This book features the author's journeys to Turkey's inhospitable eastern provinces to find out.

On 19 August 1953 the British and American intelligence agencies launched a desperate coup against a cussed, bedridden 72-year-old. Above all, the life of Muhammad Mossadegh is a warning to today's occupants of Downing Street and the White House, as they commit us all to intervention in a volatile and unpredictable region.

A superb, authoritatively written insider's account of Iran, one of the most mysterious but significant and powerful nations in the world.Few historians and journalists writing in English have been able to meaningfully examine post-revolutionary Iranian life. Years after his death, the shadow of Ayatollah Khomeini still looms over Shi'ite Islam and Iranian politics, the state of the nation fought over by conservatives and radicals. They are contending for the soul of a revolutionary Islamic government that terrified the Western establishment and took them to leadership of the Islamic world.But times have changed. Khomeini's death and the deficiencies of his successor, the intolerance and corruption that has made the regime increasingly authoritarian and cynical, frustration at Iran's economic isolation and the revolution's failure to deliver the just realm it promised has transformed the spirit of the country.In this superbly crafted and deeply thoughtful book Christopher de Bellaigue, who is married to an Iranian and has lived there for many years, gives us the voices and memories of this 'worn-out generation': be they traders or soldiers, film-makers or clerics, writers or taxi-drivers, gangsters or reformists. These are voices that are never heard, but whose lives and concerns are forging the future of one of the most secretive, misunderstood countries in the world. The result is a subtle yet intense revelation of the hearts and minds of the Iranian people.